New Migrations, New Theories

• Humans are a migratory species

• All humans come from sub-Saharan Africa

• Mercantile period: flows out of Europe due to colonization and economic growth

  • Plantation production

• Industrial period: migration out of Europe and into the Americas/Oceania due to the spread of industrialism to former colonies in the New World

• Period of limited migration: adoption of restrictive immigration laws

• Post-industrial migration: immigration became global and immigrants entered countries of the Third World

The New Face of International Migration

• The European shift from exporting to importing labour was notable because it involved the widespread movement of migrants to countries that were not intensive in land

• European governments sought to recruit temporary migrants but they decided to stay permanently and invite their families

  • Implementation of immigration restrictions

• Western Europe had become a multiracial and multi-ethnic society

• Today: imbalance between labour supply and demand in the Third World

• Today’s immigrant-receiving societies are far more intensive in capital and much less intensive in land than destination countries of the past

• Immigrant: are no longer perceived as wanted or needed

The Insufficiency of Traditional Approaches

The Crisis of Rational Explanations

• Criticisms:

  • Neoclassical economic perspective: economic disparities alone are not enough to explain international movement

• Zelinsky’s model: emphasis on proximity to a receiving area

The Crisis of Push-Pull

• Push-pull framework: migration enables a certain equilibrium to be achieved between forces of economic growth and contraction in different geographical regions

Contemporary Theories of International Migration

The Initiation of International Migration

Neoclassical Economics: Macro-Theory

• Macro-theory: international migration is caused by geographic differences in supply of and demand for labour

Neoclassical Economics: Micro-Theory

• Micro-theory: individuals decide to migrate because a cost-benefit calculation leads them to expect a positive net return, usually monetary, from movement

The New Economic of Migration

• New economics of migration: migration decisions are made by large units of related people (families, communities) in which people act collectively to maximize expected income and minimize risks and to loosen constraints associated with various kinds of market failures

Segmented Labour Market Theory

• Segmented labour market theory: international migration stems from the intrinsic labour demands of modern industrial societies

Historical-Structural Theory and World Systems

• Historical-structural theory: because political power in unequally distributed across nations, the expansion of global capitalism acted to perpetuate inequalities and reinforce a stratified economic order

  • Dependency theory

  • World systems theory

The Perpetuation of International Movement

Social Capital Theory

• Social capital theory: social capital plays a positive role in the acquisition and accumulation of other forms of capital and is a strong influence for migrant workers

Cumulative Causation

• Theory of cumulative causation: over time, international migration tends to sustain itself in ways that make additional movement progressively more likely